Business

Analytics

Report on (Tableau: The global leader in rapid-fire

business intelligence software)

Submitted by:- Group 4

Swasti Bagri 14609091

Sweta Gupta 14609092

Tanushree Aggarwal 14609094

Tarun Sharma 14609095

Trapti Garg 14609096

Utkarsh Shukla 14609097

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Contents

1 Introduction Page 2

2 What is Tableau? Page3

3 Who is it for? Page4

4 Why Tableau? Page7

5 What does Tableau Comprise of? Page7

6 Tableau Desktop Page7

7 Tableau Server Page9

8 Tableau Online Page11

9 Tableau Public Page12

10 Tableau Distribution Options Page13

11 Evaluation of Tableau Page14

12 Tableau Software Vs Microsoft Power IB Page16

13 Comparing Tableau with other Data Visualization Softwares Page 17

14 Job Trend in Tableau Page18

15 Case Study Page 20

16 References Page 21

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Introduction

Today's organizations need efficient, scalable and easily deployable business intelligence

tools in order to accomplish their goals. All too often, on boarding a new BI tool is an effort

of weeks, months or even years - and maintenance is punctuated by a never-ending stream of

user requests and expensive consulting bills.

In 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as in 2011. And 75 times the

number of information sources (IDC, 2011). Within these data are huge, unparalleled

opportunities for human advancement. But to turn opportunities into reality, people need the

power of data at their fingertips. Tableau is building software to deliver exactly that.

Tableau Software is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA,

USA. It produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business

intelligence.

The company was founded at Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science

between 1997 and 2002. Professor Pat Hanrahan and Ph.D. student Chris Stolte who

specialized in visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and

data cubes led research in the use of table-based displays to browse multidimensional

relational databases. Together, they combined a structured query language for databases with

a descriptive language for rendering graphics and invented a database visualization language

called VizQL (Visual Query Language). VizQL formed the core of the Polaris system, an

interface for exploring large multi-dimensional databases. In 2003, after Stolte recruited his

former business partner and friend, Christian Chabot, to serve as CEO Tableau was spun out

of Stanford with an eponymous software application. The product queries relational

databases, cubes, cloud database, and spreadsheets and then generates a number of graph

types that can be combined into dashboards and shared over a computer network or the

internet.

In 2010, Tableau reported revenue of $34.2 million dollars. That figure grew to $62.4

million in 2011 and $127.7 million in 2012. Profit during the same periods came to $2.7

million, $3.4 million, and $1.6 million, respectively. Shares of Tableau Software started

trading on the New York Stock Exchange after an initial public offering on May 17, 2013

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What is Tableau?

Tableau is groundbreaking data visualization software created by Tableau Software. Tableau

connects easily to nearly any data source, be it corporate Data Warehouse, Microsoft Excel or

web-based data. Tableau allows for instantaneous insight by transforming data into visually

appealing, interactive visualizations called dashboards. This process takes only seconds or

minutes rather than months or years, and is achieved through the use of an easy to use drag-

and-drop interface.

Tableau Software enables businesses to keep pace with the evolving technology landscape

and outperform competitors through an adaptive and intuitive means of visualizing their data.

One of its main advantages over other BI applications is its ability to simultaneously analyse

and blend data from different systems without the need for a data warehouse or additional

hardware.

Who is it for?

IT

Human Resources

Business Development

CIO

Product Development

Sales Management

Product Management

Database Architects

Finance

Marketing

Manufacturing Plants

Anyone who needs to see and understand data

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Why Tableau?

Speed to Market

Tableau was designed to process and analyze data in a logical, easy to follow manner.

This results in far less development time, making your data actionable faster. The

ability to adapt to a market quickly is an enormous competitive advantage. Tableau

enables you to make rapid business decisions based off your data, giving you that

advantage.

Tableau is Easy to Use

Data analytics does not have to be hard, but many data visualization platforms make it

that way. Tableau eliminates unnecessary complications, placing the focus on what

matters most – finding value in your data. Tableau’s simple drag and drop interface is

easy to learn, meaning you don’t need to be a data genius to operate it.

Tableau Does Big Data

Hailed for Big Data analysis capabilities, Tableau makes processing gratuitous

amounts of data look effortless. Tableau can analyze and visualize your data better

than any data visualization software on the market, no matter how large your data is.

Tableau Does Any Data

All data is created equal in Tableau. The user-friendly interface is supported by a

lighting fast data engine that processes data from various sources with unprecedented

intuition. You no longer need to worry about which data visualization software to use

based on your data, because Tableau does it all.

Stunning, Interactive Visualizations

Perhaps the most recognizable advantage Tableau has over competitors is its ability to

produce beautiful data visualizations. Hands down, Tableau offers the most attractive

yet functional data visualizations of any data visualization software.

Compatibility across Multiple Platforms

Tableau has revolutionized the business analytics industry by making insight

immediately accessible to anyone – whether it’s through a desktop tool, web browser,

iPad or mobile phone

Tableau is an Industry Leader

Tableau has won countless awards throughout the business intelligence industry and

is quickly becoming the standard for quality data visualization.

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Advanced In-Memory Technology- The Data Engine

Most of the data analytic software have a lot of fancy features but almost all of them

fail when it comes to operating with large amounts of data, this is where the advanced

in memory technology of tableau is a savior to all of those who need to get reports

from ever increasing data.

The tableau data engine is a breakthrough in-memory analytics database designed to

overcome the limitations of existing databases and data silos. Capable of being run on

ordinary computers, it leverages the complete memory hierarchy from disk to L1

cache. It shifts the 5 curve between big data and fast analysis. And it puts that power

into the hands of everyone. Ad-hoc analysis of massive data takes place in seconds.

No fixed data model is required.

Source:- http://www.gartner.com/

From the above graph you could see that Tableau is considered to be easiest to use &

have most capabilities or features that a BI tool must have.

TABLEAU

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Source:- http://www.gartner.com/

Customers not only rated Tableau high on ―Overall BI Success‖ but also gave it strongest

ratings on ―View of Vendor Future‖

―Overall BI Success‖ represents an aggregate rating across all dimensions — the higher the

composite score, the more positive the overall experience with the vendor.

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What does Tableau comprises of?

1. Tableau Desktop (Business analytics anyone can use)

Tableau Desktop lets you drag & drop to analyse data. In just a few clicks you can

connect to data, visualise that data and then create rich, beautiful, interactive dashboards.

Tableau Desktop Professional is for fast analytics and can connect to almost any data

source. Tableau Software’s years of research have produced Tableau Desktop – software

that supports people’s natural ability to think visually.

Characterisitcs

10 – 100x Faster:- Tableau leverages your natural ability to process data visually,

giving you a huge advantage: speed. Drag and drop to change your analysis. Turn

on one-click highlighting to identify trends. Add a filter with another click. You

can shift perspectives over and over again until you find that nugget of insight into

your data. It’s real-life business analytics for real-life business data.

Ease of use that gives you chills:- Tableau Desktop is an intuitive, drag-and-drop

tool that lets you see every change as you make it. Anyone comfortable with

Excel can get up to speed on Tableau quickly.

Smart, fit and beautiful dashboards:-Tableau lets you create rich visualizations

and dashboards. Combine multiple views into a dashboard. Insert web pages and

documents. Dashboards can be connected to live data or can use the Data Engine

to speed up your analysis.

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Direct connect & go:- In Tableau you can connect directly to databases, cubes,

data warehouses, files and spreadsheets. Your connection is live so you see up-to-

the-minute data.Old school business intelligence platforms require users to build

elaborate ―universes‖ and ―cubes‖ and ―temporary tables‖ before any real work

could be done. Tableau eliminates those steps completely. There’s no requirement

to pull data into a silo – work directly from your database. And you can still

manage your data connection and metadata.

Perfect mashups:- Connect to data in one click and layer in a second data source

with another. You can even filter from one data source to another and highlight

across data sources.

Salient Features

Visual analysis in a click: - Powerful analytical tools—at your fingertips. Filter

data dynamically, split trends across different categories or run an in-depth cohort

analysis. Double-click geographic fields to put data on a map. All without writing

a single line of code.

Deep statistics:- Go deeper into your data with new calculations on existing data.

Make one-click forecasts, build box plots and see statistical summaries of your

data. Run trend analyses, regressions, correlations, and much more. PhD not

required.

Metadata management:- Make better sense of your available data—quickly and

easily. Rename fields and modify number formats. Combine fields into groups.

Create subsets of your data by simply selecting groups of points. Use those sets to

filter other views. Build new hierarchies. Now it’s easy for you to make your data

understandable to everyone.

Best practices built in:- You get the benefit of years of research on the best ways

to represent data, built right into your workflow. Optimized color schemes,

automatic chart types and elegant design. Communicate insight in the most

effective way, automatically.

Data engine:- When you want to take data offline or bring it in-memory,

Tableau’s Data Engine lets you extract data for ad hoc analysis of massive data in

seconds. It combines advances in database and computer graphics technology to

make even huge datasets possible to analyze on a laptop or mobile device.

VizQL technology:- VizQL is a patented technology based on years of research

at Stanford University. It translates mouse clicks into database queries and

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displays the response graphically. Data visualization becomes the process for

discovering insights and sharing them with others.

2. Tableau Server (The future of enterprise business intelligence)

Tableau Server is an enterprise-level workhorse. It allows you to take those

breakthrough data visualizations you’ve created in Tableau Desktop and share them

across your entire organization. It’s browser-based & mobile based, fast and easy to use.

Tableau Software – This is a consultant’s candid review of Tableau Software in regards

to other BI Tools. This tool needed to be able to integrate into 3rd party applications such

as Salesforce.com’s CRM platform. The tool needed to provide predictive analytics to

help users discover hidden patterns and emerging trends so business users could spot

near-term as well as future opportunities. And, the last major criteria this tool needed to

have was good post-sale support, including technical troubleshooting and a robust

training offering.

Characteristics

Share, collaborate and make data-driven decisions:- Turn everyone into your best

analyst with interactive dashboards in a web browser or mobile device. Embed

dashboards in company portals across your business.

Answers, whenever you need them:- Filter data, drill down or add entirely new data

to answer to your analysis. Edit any existing view, on the web. And do it all with

Tableau’s blazing fast data engine so you get your answer when you ask it.

Provide responsible access to your data:- Tableau Server is a data governance

platform for today. Publish shared data connections from Tableau Desktop. Define

data sources, add metadata, and author entirely new calculations and data fields for

everyone to use. Do it all—securely—and with permission settings to manage access

to which data connections.

After you create your visualizations, you can create live, interactive dashboards

to be published to the web via Tableau Server.

Salient features.

Flexible data architecture:- Tableau Server leverages fast databases through live

data connections, or can extract and refresh your data in–memory with its blazing fast

data engine. Your choice, and you can change your mind any time.

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Automatic updates:- Refresh local data on schedules, at set intervals, or incremental

levels. Or just refresh it all. Get alerts when data connections fail. Set up subscriptions

so you get your data when you want it, as often as you want it.

Embedded analytics:- Tableau Server makes it easy to integrate data into your

business. Embed dashboards within your organization’s existing workflow. Whether

you need native database connectors, APIs or a suite of authentication methods, it’s in

the bag.

Scalable:- Whether you’re building a platform for a team or an entire organization,

Tableau Server is ready to grow with you. It scales with both hardware and memory,

and comes with many features to ensure it is a reliable backbone of your enterprise.

We use it ourselves to run two of the largest data platforms in the world, Tableau

Online and Tableau Public.

Secure:- Tableau Server gives you security permissions at any level you need. Multi-

tenancy provides sites to separate both users and content. Individual permissions can

be set for projects, dashboards, or even users. Even ensure that your data is secure

with data connection permissions and row-level filtering.

Mobile:- Author a dashboard once; view it anywhere, on any device. All dashboards

are automatically optimized for mobile tablets without any programming. Use

familiar tablet gestures to view and interact with dashboards in mobile web browsers

or using native iPad and Android apps.

Characteristics of Tableau Software

Tableau Software is easy to use for Business Users.

Tableau Software is not a true enterprise analytics platform; it is more like a Business

Intelligence Application.

Tableau Software’s ―In-Memory‖ engine isn’t the rapid fire fast analytics tool they

claim in our opinion; since it continually queries the database, which frequently

results in slow system performance and latency. While Spotfire® provides fast

analytics and faster data analysis through their architecture.

Tableau Software can connect to cube-based data sources such as Microsoft Analysis

Services and other OLAP data sources.

Tableau Software cannot be customized or integrated with other applications (such as

Salesforce.com®). Basically what comes in the box is what you get. No way to

extend it.

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Tableau Software lacks robust enterprise-class security (only supports Microsoft

Active Directory).

Tableau Software has no predictive or event-enabled capabilities, and its statistical

capabilities are extremely limited and are less than what you get from Microsoft

Excel.

Tableau Software does not support expanded analytics such as Box plots, network

graphs, tree-maps, heat-maps, 3D-scatter plots, Profile Charts or data relationships

tool which allow users to mine data for relationships like another data visualization

software does (such as Spotfire).

Tableau Software does not integrate collaborative capabilities into social platforms

(like Twitter, Microsoft SharePoint, etc.) like Spotfire does. A very hot trend. It is

for Business users to share their findings and progress. Think of it like – email meets

Twitter meets Facebook.

Tableau Software is not organizationally equipped to serve enterprise customers;

therefore post-sale customer support and training are quite limited.

3. Tableau Online

Tableau Online is a hosted, SaaS version of Tableau Server. It makes business intelligence

faster and easier than ever before. With cloud BI you can find answers in minutes—

whenever, wherever you are.

Characteristics

Skip the hardware and setup time with Tableau Online

Turn everyone into your best analyst with interactive dashboards in a web browser or

mobile device. And do all this in a secure software as a service web platform.

Discover data insights from anywhere in the world with Cloud BI

View dashboards from the office, at home or on the road. Filter data, drill down or

add entirely new data to your analysis. Edit any existing view, on the web.

Stay secure, by design and by default.

Data is one of your most strategic assets. Keeping it secure is our priority one. Only

your authorized users will be able to interact with your data and dashboards using

Tableau Online security.

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Features

Data management

Centralize your data, right in the cloud. Publish data sources from Tableau Desktop.

Define data connections, add metadata and author entirely new calculations and data

field for everyone to use.

Cloud data connections

Refresh Salesforce and Google Analytics data on set schedules at incremental levels.

Maintain live, direct connections with Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift. Get

alerts when data connections fail. Or push data from inside your company to Tableau

Online.

Mobile

Author a dashboard once, view it anywhere, on any device. All dashboards are

automatically optimized for mobile tablets without any programming. Use familiar

tablet gestures to view and interact with dashboards in mobile web browsers or using

native iPad and Android apps.

Subscriptions

Get critical information right in your email inbox by subscribing to a workbook.

Simply click into the email to interact with the data live in your web browser.

Reliable service

Tableau Online is a SaaS application built on the same enterprise-class architecture of

Tableau Server. We also serve tens of thousands of views everyday with Tableau

Public. Your content is ready, on-demand, on a reliable service used by millions

around the world.

Always up-to-date

We run Tableau Online, so it will always have the latest technology built in, as soon

as it’s ready. You just sit back and enjoy all the latest features.

4. Tableau Public

Tableau Public is for anyone who wants to tell stories with interactive data on the web.

It's delivered as a service that allows you to be up and running overnight. With Tableau

Public you can create amazing interactive visuals and publish them quickly, without the

help of programmers or IT.

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The Premium version of Tableau Public is for organizations that want to enhance their

websites with interactive data visualizations. There are higher limits on the size of data

you can work with. And among other premium features, you can keep your underlying

data hidden.

Why tell stories with data? Because interactive content drives more page views and

longer dwell time. Industry experts have cited figures showing that the average reading

time of a web page with an interactive visual is 4, 5 or 6 times that of a static web page.

CHARACTERISTICS

Usability: - Many users consider it to be very easy to use & has an user friendly

interface.

Tool Orientation:- This tool is designed for general purpose analysis.

Data mining type:- This tool is made for structured data mining.

Manipulation type:- This tool is designed for Data extraction, Data visualization.

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Evaluation of Tableau

Strengths

Speed

The greatest strength of Tableau is its speed with which it analyzes hundreds of

millions of rows and gives the required answers in seconds. This quality comes in

very handy when fast business decisions need to be taken.

Ease of use

Another strength of Tableau is that it is very easy to use. It’s just basic drag and drop.

One can start using Tableau even with no prior programming experience. With just

basic MS Excel skills one can easily learn Tableau.

Beautiful and interactive dashboard

The Dashboard of Tableau is very interactive and gives dynamic results. Rich

visualizations can be created very easily. The graphics and charts are smart and

beautiful. Images, web pages and documents can be added into the dashboard for easy

story telling. All this leads to a much insight into the data.

Direct connection

Tableau allows the users to directly connect to databases, cubes, and data warehouses

etc. The data access is so easy without any advanced setup and the data is live that

keeps getting updated on its own. One can pick tables from spreadsheets to data from

Hadoop to create a perfect mash-up and get desired results in no time. This is simple

ad hoc business analytics.

Easy publishing and sharing

After analyzing the data, the results can be shared live with just a few clicks. The

dashboard can be published to share it live on web and mobile devices.

Growing Market

Tableau is relatively new in the Business Intelligence market but its market share is

growing on a daily basis. It is being nearly all industries, from transportation to

healthcare. It has big client base, which consists of big companies like Microsoft,

Nokia, PwC and Deloitte. They use Tableau on a daily basis to meet their business

Intelligence requirements.

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Weakness

Not comprehensive solution, specialize in BI

Tableau Software is an easy to use BI application, but still not a platform for

developing analytic applications that can be broadly shared. It is not designed for

enterprise wide deployments that have broad business and technical user populations.

No predictive analytical capabilities

Tableau Software allows users to only analyze what has happened. And, Tableau

Software does not have any statistical or predictive capabilities (they do not support

SAS, S+, R, ect. like Spotfire does). Therefore users cannot model or project the best

cross-selling or upselling opportunities. In fact Tableau Software is statistically

―challenged‖ and is extremely limited; providing users with less statistic functions

than Microsoft Excel.

Customization and Integration with other apps

Due to its not open-source based nature and market commodity, Tableau Software

cannot be customized or integrated with other applications (such as

Salesforce.com®). Basically what comes in the box is what you get. No way to extend

it. However, their official website has Forum section, users could vote for their ideas,

whenever reaching the threshold, the company would response and probably add such

features in the following version and update for purchased packages.

Expandability for analytics

Tableau Software does not support expanded analytics such as Box plots, network

graphs, tree-maps, heat-maps, 3D-scatter plots, Profile Charts or data relationships

tool which allow users to mine data for relationships like another data visualization

software does.

Social media integration

Tableau Software does not integrate collaborative capabilities into social platforms

(like Twitter, Microsoft SharePoint, etc.). A very hot trend. It is for Business users to

share their findings and progress. Think of it like – email meets Twitter meets

Facebook. Due the current trend and users’ need, Tableau has integrated Google

Analytics into its platform. 7

Robust enterprise-class security

Tableau Software is not organizationally equipped to serve enterprise customers.

Tableau Software lacks robust enterprise-class security (only supports Microsoft

Active Directory). Therefore post-sale customer support and training are quite limited.

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Tableau Software vs. Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft BI Tableau Sofware

Best Fit For

Large enterprise-wide deployments

with IT oversight and governance.

Microsoft shops with pre-existing

investments in SQL Server and

Office.

Organizations using a different

RDBMS will have a steeper

learning curve.

Those who want to build real time

visualizations on the fly, with little

technical expertise required.

Companies of all sizes use Desktop

edition to build visualizations very

rapidly.

Server and Online editions allow

visualizations to be shared.

Value

Proposition

Highly scalable, enterprise-level BI

platform with very broad set of

integrated capabilities.

Platform is mature and highly

stable - capable of handling many

different scenarios and customer

needs, although Power BI for

Office 365 is still new and

untested.

Dashboards simple to build, even for

a novice.

Best for visualizing a single data set.

Very active user community

Extensive technology partner

network .

Usability

IT-authored reports using SQL

Server Reporting Services are

inflexible, but easy to consume by end

users. More ad-hoc user analysis

requires Excel and PowerPivot

expertise which can be challenging for

some users.

Simple, clean, drag and drop interface.

Extremely easy to use without any

dependence on IT.

Integration

In addition to Microsoft data sources

like SQL Server, Windows Azure SQL

Database, and Access, Microsoft BI,

integrates with Oracle, IBM DB2,

MySql, PostgreSQL and Teradata.

Integrates with a broad range of data

sources including spreadsheets, CSV,

SQL databases, Salesforce, Cloudera

Hadoop, Firebird, Google Analytics,

Google BigQuery, Hortonworks

Hadoop, HP Vertica, MS SQL Server,

MySQL, OData, Oracle, Pivotal

Greenplum, PostgreSQL, Salesforce,

Teradata, and Windows Azure

Marketplace

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Off course, the best BI work will be done by professionals who utilize Power BI and Tableau

in conjunction with one another, allowing each to lend its particular strengths to the specific

needs of each challenge.

Comparing Tableau with other Data Visualization products

Criteria Spotfire Qlikview Tableau MS BI

Stack Comment

Business

Criteria ======= ======= ======= ======= Speed, Scalability, Price

Implementation

Speed Good High Good Average

Qlikview is fastest to

implement

Scalability Unlimited Limited

by RAM

Very

Good Good

Need the expert in scalable

SaaS

Pricing High Above

Average High Average

Microsoft is the price

leader

Licensing/support

cost High High High Average

Smart Client is the best

way to save

Enterprise

Readiness Excellent

Good for

SMB

Good for

SMB Excellent

Partners are the key to

SMB market

Long-term

viability Good 1 product Average Excellent

Microsoft are 35+ years in

business

Mindshare Analytics

Market Growing

fast

Growing

fast

3rd

attempt

to win BI

Qlikview is a DV

Leader, Successful IPO

Technical

Criteria ======= ======= ======= ======= Drilldown, Analytics, UI

Clients for End

Users

ZFC,

Spotfire

Silver

RIA, ZFC,

Mobile

Windows,

ZFC

Excel,

.NET

Free Qlikview Personal

Edition is a big plus

Interactive

Visualization

Very

Good Excellent

Very

Good

As good

as Excel

Most users value

Visualization over

Modeling

Data Integration Good Good Excellent Good Need for Data Integration

expert

Visual Drill-

Down

Very

Good Excellent Good Average

Qlikview is fastest thanks

to in-memory database

Dashboard

Support

Very

Good Excellent Good

Below

Average

Spotfire and Qlikview are

best for Dashboards

Integration with

GIS Excellent Good Good Average

Spotfire has the best GIS

integration

Modeling and

Analytics Excellent Weak

Excellent

OLAP

Good

with

SSAS

Spotfire is the best, Excel is

the most popular

UI & set of

Visual Controls

Very

Good Best

Very

Good Good

Need for UI expert to

integrate DV components

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Development

Environment Rich API,

S+

Scripting,

Rich API Average Excellent

Tableau requires less

consulting than

competitors

64-bit In-

Memory

Columnar DB

Very

Good Excellent

In-

memory

Data

Engine

Very

Good

64-bit RAM allows huge

datasets in memory

Summary – Best

for:

Visual

Analytics

DV,

Drilldown

Visual

OLAP

Backend

for DV

Good Visualization

requires a customization!

Job Trend in Tableau

There is an emerging genre of BI tools built specifically for business users to perform visual

data discovery. The user interfaces are designed to be intuitive and the features simple. These

software products are meant to require little if any training. Architecturally, many provide in-

memory analysis for high performance.

Of course, these "exploration" tools are also not intended to be full enterprise BI platforms.

Instead, they are complementary to more robust products. You will not replace your existing

BI products (SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, IBI WebFOCUS, MicroStrategy, etc.)

with the limited scope of visualization software but you might consider supplementing them.

Competitive Vendors

The main data exploration products on the market today include:

QlikView

Spotfire

Tableau

ADVIZOR Solutions which is also sold as WebFOCUS Visual Discovery

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Tibco's Spotfire is the old grand-daddy in this list and was quickly overtaken by the new kids

on the block: QlikView from Sweden and Tableau from the Silicon Valley of the United

States.

While QlikTech's revenue reporting for QlikView appears much higher than that of

Tableau's, the job statistics imply that Tableau is in much higher demand.

Tableau to be the Winner?

Tableau arose out of a Stanford University research project from 1997 to 2002, and was spun

off as a company in 2003. (Keep in mind that Jim Goodnight started SAS as a small college

project which he later grew into a multi-billion dollar mega-software vendor.)

As part of a Department of Defense initiative, PhD candidate Chris Stolte created a "Visual

Query Language" to explore large multi-dimensional databases. As luck would have it,

Stolte's university mentor was Pat Hanrahan, a founding employee of Pixar.

Together, they created what has been called ―a kind of high powered, highly visual Excel,‖

which is a really good way of explaining the innovative software product. One of their first

interested partners was Essbase, which makes sense. A common user interface for the

Essbase cube was Excel, and Tableau was a nice next-generation version of that.

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CASE STUDY:

Saving Time and Money with Simplified Information

Sharing

Customer Profile Blastrac Manufacturing is a mid-sized worldwide manufacturer that operates in the Americas,

Europe and Asia.

Customer Case Description Blastrac depended on the creation and distribution of reports across the organization to make

business decisions. However, the company did not have a consistent reporting method in

place and, consequently, preparation of reports for the company’s various needs (sales data,

working capital, inventory, purchase analysis, etc.) was tedious. Blastrac’s analysts each

spent nearly one whole day per week (a total of 20-30 hours) extracting data from the

multiple Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, loading it into several Excel

spreadsheets, creating filtering capabilities and establishing pre-defined pivot tables.

Not only were these massive spreadsheets often inaccurate and consistently hard to

understand, but also they were virtually useless for the sales team, which couldn’t work with

the complex format. In addition, each consumer of the reports had different needs—while

some thought the reports were lacking detail, others thought there was far too much detail to

wade through.

Blastrac Vice President and CIO Dan Murray began looking for a solution to the company’s

reporting troubles. He quickly ruled out the rollout of a single ERP system, a multi-million

dollar proposition. He also eliminated the possibility of an enterprise-wide business

intelligence (BI) platform deployment because of cost—quotes from five different vendors

ranged from $130,000 to over $500,000. What Murray needed was a solution that was

affordable, could deploy quickly without disrupting current systems and was able to represent

data consistently regardless of the multiple currencies Blastrac operates in.

The Solution Working with IT services consultant Interworks, Inc. out of Oklahoma, Murray and team

finessed the data sources. Murray then deployed two data visualization tools from Tableau

Software: Tableau Desktop, a visual data analysis solution that allowed Blastrac analysts to

quickly and easily create intuitive and visually compelling reports, and Tableau Reader, a

free application that enabled everyone across the company to directly interact with the

reports, filtering, sorting, extracting and printing data as it fit their needs. And at a total cost

of less than one third the lowest competing BI quote, Tableau fit Blastrac’s budget too.

With only one hour per week now required to create reports—a 95-percent increase in

productivity—and updates to these reports happening automatically though Tableau, Murray

and his team are able to proactively identify major business events reflected in company

data—such as an exceptionally large sale—instead of reacting to incoming questions from

employees as they had been forced to do previously.

21 | P a g e

―Prior to deploying Tableau, I spent countless hours customizing and creating new reports

based on individual requests, which was not efficient or productive for me,‖ said Murray.

―With Tableau, we create one report for each business area, and, with very little

training, they can explore the data themselves. By deploying Tableau, I not only saved

thousands of dollars and endless months of deployment, but I’m also now able to create

a product that is infinitely more valuable for people across the organization.‖

References

http://www.interworks.com/services/business-intelligence/why-tableau)

http://bi-software.blogspot.in/2012/12/pretty-pictures-of-bi-tableau.html

http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/business-intelligence-

visualization.aspx)

http://origin-www.tableau.com/learn/stories/spotlight-blastric